Did we lose some threads from the General section?

Phishfry

Phishfry

I had a thread from July 7th that I wanted to add information to and I noticed it is missing.
It seems a whole chunk of the 'General' Forum has a gap. From July 2 to a few days ago.
 
Phishfry said:
This is what I was looking for.
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/headless-xorg-for-x-forwarding.66604/

Doesn't it seem strange that there is a 10 day gap in 'General'? From the July 2 to July 12.
That seems unlikely.
Click to expand...
Didn't I respond to that thread too? I can remember the thread but can't find it either. Threads aren't supposed to magically disappear. At least not until we (admins/mods) delete it. But that would leave an audit trail. Not sure what's going on, it might be some issue with the database backend. I'll try and find out what's going on.
 
Yes you replied. Somebody else came in too and gave a nice description about the 'X -retro :0' display question too after I asked.
No big deal at all though.
Still indexed on Google.
 
Right. That took a lot of delving into the database. I will have to hold my hand up to this one.

On July 11 I wiped out 28 threads:

Code: 
mysql> select log_date,user_id,content_type,content_id,content_username,content_title from xf_moderator_log where log_date='1531311826';
+------------+---------+--------------+------------+------------------+----------------------------------------------------------+
| log_date   | user_id | content_type | content_id | content_username | content_title                                            |
+------------+---------+--------------+------------+------------------+----------------------------------------------------------+
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |        351 | smarc            | Hello, Greetings & Self-Introduction Thread              |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |       3338 | trev             | Do you $support$ the FreeBSD Foundation?                 |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |       9294 | DutchDaemon      | FreeBSD? So, what is it?                                 |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      63888 | mrclksr          | NomadBSD - a live system based on FreeBSD                |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      65272 | robert wild      | error when trying to mount smb share                     |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      66492 | zoujiaqing       | Why not use openrc with initsystem?                      |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      66509 | Iospa            | Gratuitous ARP messages every x amounts of seconds       |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      66521 | Harley55         | How to Add a user to the Sudoers File.                   |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      66523 | joachin          | Problems with AMD Radeon HD7750                          |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      66533 | alx82            | zfs shared nfs pool, data not visible via ssh            |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      66536 | alx82            | Random crash after upgrading to 11.2, howto debug        |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      66539 | stratacast1      | Slack client alternative?                                |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      66541 | CyberCr33p       | total nullfs mounts limit                                |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      66547 | alx82            | How to prevent auto-reboot on panic/crash                |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      66551 | alx82            | UFS data loss/corruption on system crash                 |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      66559 | fernandel        | FreeBSD 11.2 - boot                                      |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      66560 | Emrion           | Check vulnerabilties in built-in FreeBSD softwares       |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      66575 | alx82            | FreeBSD on laptop, kindly share your experience          |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      66577 | alx82            | gjournal size on only one provider                       |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      66584 | Ninja_Root       | Part of FreeBSD Handbook are outdated.                   |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      66593 | balanga          | Problems make a symbolic link                            |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      66594 | fabric           | .profile & .shrc confusion                               |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      66604 | Phishfry         | Headless Xorg for X-forwarding                           |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      66612 | tuaris           | pam_exec.so throws error "waitpid(): No child processes" |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      66627 | joachin          | How to configure my make.conf?                           |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      66641 | macondo          | FF Quantum - No sound                                    |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      66644 | IPTRACE          | df command locked the shell                              |
| 1531311826 |     812 | thread       |      66662 | iantimothy       | Partition numbering between systems                      |
+------------+---------+--------------+------------+------------------+----------------------------------------------------------+
28 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Given the timing (roughly five days after I declared the Why is FreeBSD not (more) like ... topics unwanted (and up for removal), I tried to do some house cleaning.

I guess I tried to delete the Why not use openrc with initsystem? thread listed above, which was one of the recent topics that started to annoy the regulars, and inadvertently selected multiple topics (which I'm afraid is very easy to do in XenForo) and hard-deleted them all. As you can see from the order above: the three lowest-numbered threads were Sticky Threads in General, the other threads were all quite recent, with new posts in the first two weeks of July (roughly). Basically: I (must have) wiped out the entire first page of the General forum on July 11.

I'll take a look at backups, but I'm not sure I can retrieve this content and/or restore it in any meaningful way.

I apologize. The irony is thick on this one.
 
I checked the backups.

Like most organisations, we back up in daily, weekly, and monthly increments.

Unfortunately, in our case, July 11 falls right in between the oldest weekly and the newest monthly backup, which means that there is a gap in the database backups spanning the period between July 1 and July 12. And this happened on July 11. Restoring the monthly backup of July 1 will restore the Sticky Topics, and one or two threads that were actually started on or before July 1, but posts to those threads between July 1 and July 11 would be missing. All threads started between July 1 and July 12 cannot be restored at all.

All in all, not really worth it.

Again: I apologize to all whose threads and posts were removed.
 
All I can offer right now is the topic titles that you can feed to Google or some other crawler. Paste any line below right into the Google search box (you can find the Google cache by using the little 'down arrow' next to the result - but only if a cache is present, and unfortunately the cache will time out and disappear over time).

If you copy the link of the forum topic, you may have luck with the Wayback Machine at https://web.archive.org/

E.g., the first result below leads to the URL https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/hello-greetings-self-introduction-thread.351/, which you can feed to the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/*/https...hello-greetings-self-introduction-thread.351/

Won't work for all, but between Google's cache and other resources like DuckDuckGo, Bing, Yahoo, you may just get lucky.

site:forums.freebsd.org "Hello, Greetings & Self-Introduction Thread"
site:forums.freebsd.org "Do you $support$ the FreeBSD Foundation?"
site:forums.freebsd.org "FreeBSD? So, what is it?"
site:forums.freebsd.org "NomadBSD - a live system based on FreeBSD"
site:forums.freebsd.org "error when trying to mount smb share"
site:forums.freebsd.org "Gratuitous ARP messages every x amounts of seconds"
site:forums.freebsd.org "How to Add a user to the Sudoers File."
site:forums.freebsd.org "Problems with AMD Radeon HD7750"
site:forums.freebsd.org "zfs shared nfs pool, data not visible via ssh"
site:forums.freebsd.org "Random crash after upgrading to 11.2, howto debug"
site:forums.freebsd.org "Slack client alternative?"
site:forums.freebsd.org "total nullfs mounts limit"
site:forums.freebsd.org "How to prevent auto-reboot on panic/crash"
site:forums.freebsd.org "UFS data loss/corruption on system crash"
site:forums.freebsd.org "FreeBSD 11.2 - boot"
site:forums.freebsd.org "Check vulnerabilties in built-in FreeBSD softwares"
site:forums.freebsd.org "FreeBSD on laptop, kindly share your experience"
site:forums.freebsd.org "gjournal size on only one provider"
site:forums.freebsd.org "Part of FreeBSD Handbook are outdated."
site:forums.freebsd.org "Problems make a symbolic link"
site:forums.freebsd.org ".profile & .shrc confusion"
site:forums.freebsd.org "Headless Xorg for X-forwarding"
site:forums.freebsd.org "pam_exec.so throws error "waitpid(): No child processes""
site:forums.freebsd.org "How to configure my make.conf?"
site:forums.freebsd.org "FF Quantum - No sound"
site:forums.freebsd.org "df command locked the shell"
site:forums.freebsd.org "Partition numbering between systems"
 
Sorry for a mini-vent... Friday, just had my first (cold) beer and this also happens to be one of my favorite forums. The perfect mixture for a rant :D

Seriously though: this is a classic example why I have so much respect for you guys (forum staff). Let's be honest: you also could have played the "arrogant card" by simply ignoring this topic. Or you could have simply shared that "something" was wrong with those topics and that was the end of it.

Instead you recognize the oddity, dive into it full force and even when it turns out that you guys made a mistake you don't try to cover it up but instead give us forum users full transparency. Seriously: in this day and age you don't get to see that very often (at least that's my impression of it), and in my opinion that gesture alone demands respect.

Thanks for looking into this DutchDaemon and most of all: thanks for being honest with us forum users.

</rant>
 
I realize now that I could've just ascribed this to a Russian hack, and, truth being stranger than fiction nowadays, almost everyone would've bought it.

But on a more serious note: I've been running servers and server environments since 1997, and I've been playing around on the net since at least half a decade before that.
Honesty is the best policy.

Don't ever let a manager or co-worker tell you to pull the wool over the eyes of customers or clients. It just isn't worth it. Communicate clearly and honestly, and you will have a net profit. And not just in monetary terms.
 
DutchDaemon said:
I realize now that I could've just ascribed this to a Russian hack, and, truth being stranger than fiction nowadays, almost everyone would've bought it.
Click to expand...
That could only have a negative impact on reputation anyway, and would probably scare people away.

It's better to give disclaimers early on about business matters, to not mislead people even if unintentionally. It may be inconvenient, but at least they won't get angry later on.
 
I have uncovered the plot! You thought you'd get away with this Forum staff but I caught up to you :D

(please, please, please: don't take any of this too seriously, but I just want to poke a wee bit of fun in here).

After DutchDeamon's recent post about Russian hackers I suddenly realized something.. Could this be an attempt to divert our attention from something? Then I checked and I gasped because I was right. And I was never happier (but then again, I only found out when trying to use this as an example on another forum :p).

I discovered that my last "feedback thread" is also gone. In all honesty: I don't mind. I even think it's best this way. But I also think it was a thread which clearly showcased that you guys (=forum staff) seriously listen and reflect on suggestions from the community.

You really didn't need to remove one page of General topics just to cover up ya know <RUNS LIKE HECK!!> :D

naah, I shared my opinion above and I still stand by that 110%. The main reason I posted this was to poke a wee bit of fun but also to share that it wasn't just the General section (edit): bad assumption on my part, see DutchDeamon's post below.

Stuff happens, simple as that, and now back to our regular program :)
 
I did not mean to cause a international incident. Was just wondering if I offended somebody with a post and noticed the gap in dates...
Thank You everyone who looked into this. I am sure the forum will survive.
 
ShelLuser said:
https://www.google.nl/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjZx8a1wK7cAhXP_qQKHdnsAOAQFghCMAM&url=https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/i-dont-think-the-best-answer-feature-is-a-good-one.66194/&usg=AOvVaw2BzDlOgXEGnKJkQa6HYwCi

Stuff happens, simple as that, and now back to our regular program :)
Click to expand...

Actually, that thread does still exist, but it's been moved to the archive because it served no further purpose since the add-on was removed. So only staff can see it. I can assure you that only General was affected by my faux pas.
 
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